Foreword / Lito Tejada-Flores -- Publications cited -- Rugged individualists -- Scientists and surveyors -- The heroic age -- To the top of the continent -- Conrad Kain and Albert MacCarthy -- Mount Alberta -- A piece of bent iron -- Robert Underhill and Jack Durrance -- The Sierrans -- The Pacific Northwest and Alaska -- Mount Waddington -- Worlds apart -- Hard rock, hard steel -- The southern Californians -- Ungentlemanly behavior -- The north face -- Mount McKinley -- El Capitan -- Layton, the Great 'Un -- North to the future -- The granite crucible -- Into the seventies